i feel exactly the same. dont get me wrong the conversion is amazing and i cant believe how inexpensive it is, but i dont think i could ever get used to an fd sounding a v8. i definatly perfer the sound of the rotary over a v8 anyday. that sound, imo, doesnt fit the look of the rx7.

 

I dont understand your comment about not liking to shift from 5th to 3rd to eat up a Cobra since its a 2 gear downshift.

Do you think making a 3gear downshift with a 6 speed would be better??? The only thing you get with a 6 speed is an extra overdrive to help with fuel economy on the street.

Why would you rather drop down 3 gears than 2?????

I dont get it???

STEPHEN

 

Also, whats the big deal with running 11's??? You can run 11's with the stock engine and turbos much cheaper than doing a LS1 conversion. The difference I see is that with all the low end tq your V8 is going to spin like mad on the street so I'd imagine a mid 11 sec rotary powered car would eat up a mid 11 sec LS1 on the street. Gobs of tq make it hard to gun it from a street light.

Also, the main downfall to the rotary is tuning, with SOOO many people now having single turbos and standalong computers tuning has come A LONG way in the past year or so. Hell, everyday people are advancing further and further with the rotary tuning. I would much rather see a shop with a mobile dyno and a expert rotary tuner than a shop for V8 conversions because no one has the drive to learn how to tune a rotary. ErnieT just ran 10's on a BONE STOCK MAZDA REMAN WITH NO PROBS.

Done get me wrong, I'm a fan of business and development and everyone has the right to do what ever they want to thier cars and I totally respect that. It just seems like a step back to the people that care about learning the rotary and how to tune it.

STEPHEN

 

Hum... I don't know about that. With all that low end torque you don't have to have a perfect launch to win a race. Imagine a 5mph roll. A rotary will have a hell of a time trying to play catch up when the V8 has a huge jump on you. Turbo lag is a bitch!!

Oh yeah, you won't "spin like mad" if you know how to control your torque. Of course if you spin your tires, you're gonna let off the throttle not give it more

 

to all you chevy fans:

send me info about your rotaries for sale

 

RIGHT!!!!! and it is hard to accelerate fast when your getting off the throttle

FOR ME, its much easier to launch at a little higher rpm so I have less tq but since its at a higher rpm it creates more hp which means more accelleration.

Tq doesnt make your car fast, the frequency of tq makes it fast which means 250lbs of tq at 5000rpms will make a lot more acceleration than 500lbs of tq at 2000 rpms......EVENTHOUGH the 500 at 2000rpms will shred your tires all day long.

STEPHEN

 

Me tooo!! Any of yous guys here in Va, that want to get rid of that pesky rotory and them damn turbo's, i will happily buy them from you! ( and walk on you at the track with your old motor ) Nah, j/k'ing (sorta). I am about in need of a rotory (only cause i run the **** out of mine, day in day out and up to 200 miles or better on my FD a day.) Let me know!!

 

Ive recently saved up enough money to get a new engine and a single turbo conv. Now that this v8 swap into 7 idea has been brought to my attention I am VERY interested.

I will sacrafice the weight factor for a NA 350+ horsepower engine. I love turbos but NA is much more dependable(in any case), and it is undoubtly more responsive when it comes to the speed factor.

To all those haters out there, who feel they have the right to put down what v8lover has done they have no right. This is his art, if you dont like the exibit then just walk out, no need to put in the comments. What he has done as many have said before in this thread, is far and beyond what many could acheive or even comprehend being possible.

My question to this conversion though, is... when finished will I still have my A/C?!?!?! I live in Texas and although I like the idea, if I have no A/C in the summer I'll just have to keep with the origional plan and have Marcus Williams the Houston 7 specialst go to shop on my baby.

Having to get a new diff is not a prob, thats why Kaaz is here, 1.5 street or 2 way. Those lsds could easily handle the torqe given from an ls1.

To v8lover, hurry up and get the pricing for a drop off drive off operation!!! I have the car waiting to be hauled off and the money waiting to be invested in a very good alternative to the 13b TT setup.

 

Rotary don't have torque down low so when I'm in 5th, I've to double clutch to get the torque I need in order to eat up a cobra SVT. Now, with a T-56, I can just drop one gear if I'm in 6th and get enough torque to do the job. Hey, the less shifting the better... I see this at the Petit Lemans, the Viper uses 1 to 2 shifts less than the Porsche due to the torque ...

Don't get me wrong, I love the simple concept of the rotary; I don't like the downsides.

I don't like pistons with all the reciprocating parts but they're more reliable.

 

The amount of horsepower you put to the wheels is what will determine acceleration. The fact that a V8 makes much more torque and hp at low rpms just makes it a lot easier to drive in most situations. 250 ft-lbs at 5000 rpm and 500 ft-lbs at 2500 rpm will give you the exact same hp. Just because you are revving at a higher rpm and are making less torque doesn't mean you are going to smoke the tires any less.

 

Don't listen to the haters.

The V8 RX-7 is bad-***. I may end up owning an RX-7 again after all.

Bye-bye Wankel power! Muhahahaha

 

So what kind of car is it now?

LS-7 or LX-7

 

V8Lover,
How about a HiRes picture of the engine compartment? The HiRes on the web site is cool, but it doesn't really show anything new...

 

har har

 

This is a tough topic. Although I don't think I could ever make my 7 a V8, I have no doubt that the LS1 will perform well. I fully understand the frustration of the rotary engine(unreliability, ease of working on, etc...) For some people, the conversion makes sense. They love the look of the car, but don't want to deal with the rotary for whatever reason. You're not going to be able to predict a winner when it comes to performance until you see the two engines side by side. The LS-1 is a kickass motor. The rotary has it's strenghts as well.
The only point I can't get with is someone prefering the sound of a rotary over a V8. I gotta hand it to that person, as they are a true rotary head. I just think a V8 sounds better. I guess it's all opinion. I do like the rotary's sound though, just not as much.

 

Rx7 with an upgraded hiflow cat and exaust may sound pretty good, a purr at idle and pretty good sound at high rpms...

But a v8 at idle is a big growling bear and an A bomb at high rpms.

The sound of the car really has no influence on my choice when I get my new engine weather its the ls1 or new rotary...

BUt it cant hurt be heard afew miles away as you drop the pedal.

 

hey, i am in no way hating on what he did. Hopefully no one was saying i was. Regardless, i own my...see...MY (mine, not his or theres, but mine) RX-7 because, and mainly because, i am fascinated by wankel and what he has engineered. I give credit when credit is due. Nice Job!! (to V8Lover)

I just think it takes more ingeniuty (ok maybe money t oo) to have a daily driven rotary engine car, with turbo. I think its the whole point in an "RX-7". Again just my thought!

Oh and a SVT Mustang..? C'mon, i play with my buddy's roush all day and he wish he could keep up!! and i have stock motor and turbo's?

 

V8Lover,

I think you did something very commendable here and it's a great accomplishment. I would have never thought the RX7 could have gone from 1.3L to 5.7L, not lose much weight over it, and be fast as fawk.

But to me personally, i like the RX7 b/c of it's rotary motor. As some others have pointed out, it kind of scares me that possibly in a few years, the fastest/most modified FD3Ss will be V8 powered. Good luck to you on this continuing project!

Danny

 

I had the idea for and started the fabrication of an FD LT1 conversion kit with Grant Robbins (Granny's) in October of 1999.

Bill Hagen was the first to complete an FD LT1 conversion in the summer of 2000, using an engine cradle from Grant. MY engine cradle, actually, but that's another story...

Brian, to the best of my knowledge, is the first to successfully complete an FD LS1 conversion, with his own cradle.

Grant's "LS1" cradle is nothing more than the LT1 cradle with different mounting provisions for an FC manual steering rack and extra brackets which are supposed to adapt an LS1 to the cradle. Apparently they don't work, hence Brian's pioneering of an "alternative method".

 

Exactly, and horsepower is the frequency of torque.

Yes it does, in my example I didnt use the same rpms you just mentioned, I used 250@5000 = 238rwhp and 500@2000 = 190rwhp. The tq is what breaks your tires loose. I've got a truck at the office that we pull a 12000lbs trailer with and I can smoke the tires all day long at from a dead idle which is somewhere around 450lbs of tq @ around 1000 rpms...which is only around 85rwhp. But all that tq kills its traction. Because the tq is acutally the amt of force its pushing....the force is what breaks the tires loose.

Also why a Stang or SS can do a much better burn out than me eventhough I can bust thier *** thru the 1/4.

STEPHEN

 

So you are saying that putting MORE power to the wheels (238 hp, in your example), will have MORE traction than putting 190 hp at the wheels, with everything else equal? That doesn't make any sense. Power is power, independant of its source.

 

Maybe after you launch, and the rpms start to drop, the higher torque engine will have more of a tendency to lose traction than the lower torque engine. But thats not really what we're talking about.

 

the initial force of high torqe breaks the tires loose. The tires are spinning with much more force due to the high tq eventhough they are spinning at a slower rpm.

This is getting hard to explain, its like I know what I want to say but I'm not sure how to word it.

Everytime the V8's tire turns its doing so with 400lbs of tq....or force. Evertime my cars tire turns its doing so with 250lbs of tq...its just that its turning more cause I'm running higher rpms.

Does that make more since??? About as clear as mud huh haha

STEPHEN

 

I have to give props to the skill it must have required to do this V8 swap, but.........if you want an LS1, then go and buy a Vette. If you want the reliability of a Vette, then go buy a Vette. It's hard for me to comprehend why people do things like this.

 

That doesn't make to me. If you put two different configurations on a dyno, the one with 238 hp of torque is going to accelerate faster (i.e., it is making more power an pushing against the dyno drums with more force). The 190 hp is going to push against the dyno with less force. You would be more likely to have traction problems with the higher horsepower car, assuming both engines stay in their respective horsepower ranges.

I think we need a knowledgable third party person to agree with one of us. The way I see it, power is power. Whether it comes from a low torque or high torque engine seems irrelevant.